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Management (bp coyle)

Uncle Charlie is here. Everyone loves when he came to stay. He’s a record producer and well loaded. He has a new car each time, always something flash. And he brings presents, really cool presents. Mom complains that he is spoiling us but he tells her he has no kids of his own to spoil so she has to let him spoil us.

Don’t get me wrong, the money and the presents are great but Charlie is a cool guy. He tells the best stories at dinner.

Tonight we asked him about his latest album.

‘Well,’ he began, putting his fork down. ‘I’ve been working with a new young band from the north.’ He paused for a second, took a sip of water. The tension built. ‘These guys. Wow! So, they’re punks. Like something from the seventies. I swear, if you saw them coming towards you, you’d cross the road. Anyway, first day the band turn up and their manager tells me the guitarist is missing. I say that’s cool, we can put the track down and add the guitar later. This happens every day for a week. Finally we have everything else done. The band’s on a tight budget, there’s only one day left in the studio and the manager swears he’ll have the guitarist first thing next morning. And he does. The dude doesn’t look great and he reeks of cider but he’s there.

‘I start the first song and he plays his part. It gets to the solo, he does his thing. Job done, took five minutes. Same thing next song, except there’s a problem. I turn to the manager who’s sitting behind me. He’s smiling, giving me a thumbs up and I tell him we can’t use it. The guitarist has done the exact same solo as the first one. The manager shrugs, says no worries, he’ll sort it out. So he goes into the recording room, I can see them through the glass. He walk up the guitarist and head butts him in the face. Guy collapses. Manager comes back and says everything is sorted. I am in shock. The guitarist climbs to his feet. He looks stunned and there is blood streaming from his nose. He picks up his guitar and nods that he is ready. He gets every other song perfect. And everyone acts like nothing odd has happened.’